Background
Unfortunately, solid waste produced in the Caspian area coastline cities, partially get deposited in depo sites inside the Hyrcanian Caspain Forests. The waste management in the country has been mainly focused on waste removal and disposal, rather than waste reduction by the citizens. As the Caspian Area has one of the highest tourism area in the country, the villa owners and tourists behavior towards waste disposal and their consumption patterns and attitudes have also affected the rural people?s zero waste production tradition.

GEF SGP projects in Safaroud area promoted household and neighborhood composting and developed easy technologies. A centralized Neighborhood community composting unit was designed and constructed in Safaroud region in Mazandaran (Govramak village) for the first time (2011-2012). The technology includes a pit composting unit together with a simple windrow for maturating the finished compost. Household vermicomposting units also were planned and implemented by the local cooperative in Mianlot village in that region. Because of using final maturated compost by rural communities, a growing number of farmers and gardeners who rely on chemical fertilizers are realizing the value of compost for plant growth and restoring depleted soil.

Project brief
The main objective of the proposed project is to empowering the people to be able to produce biocompost and other from organic rural solid waste together with caw manure.

Project activities:
The proposed project includes the following aspects:
1. Replication of centralized community composting and household composting units and lobbing with relevant government authorities
a. Improving waste management system through decreasing the frequency of waste collection and finally the system total cost.
b. Composting the organic part of solid wastes will reduce the amount of wastes transported to local landfills and this will result in decreasing pollution point sources and also GHGs emissions (particularly CH4) to the atmosphere.
c. Compost and particularly vermicompost generated by the people could be sold in local markets and so might provide small income for families. As well as using compost agriculture will have a positive effect as compost will improve the quality of almost any soil, and for this reason it is most often considered a soil conditioner. The presence of these decomposers means that there is still some organic material being slowly broken down releasing nutrients as foods pass through their digestive tracts. They also represent balanced soil ecology.
2. Training of Network of local Municipalities and local Councils from the Caspian Area using the demonstration sites
a. Limiting the waste landfilling by developing composting systems (both centralized and vermicomposting) will protect the Caspian Forests
b. Research is showing us that soil treated with compost and vermicompost tends to produce plants with fewer pest problems. They help to control diseases and insects that might otherwise overrun a more sterile soil lacking natural checks against their spread. Leaf based compost is showing promise suppressing nematodes.
3. Developing the required documentation and simple how to do guidelines to help upscaling in other sites in the Caspian Area as a step towards its mainstreaming
4. Finalizing a LoA (Letter of Agreement) with the Ministry of Interior (Municipalities and Rural Municipalities Organization) on expansion of composting in the Caspian Provinces.